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BOOG CITY
A COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER FROM A GROUP OF ARTISTS AND WRITERS BASED IN AND AROUND NEW YORK CITY’S EAST VILLAGE
ISSUE 54 FREE
ART
POETRY
Lauren Bon
Kate Broad, Elisa Gabbert,
Paige Taggart
URBAN FOLK RELAUNCH INSIDE
Reviews of Club Mate, Creaky Boards, Tamara Hey,
Frank Hoier, M. Lamar, and More New Releases
Long Live the King
Jack Kirby’s Trip from the L.E.S. to Comics’ Icon
BY MARK L AMOUREUX
Kirby: King of Comics
Mark Evanier
Harry N. Abrams
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus (Volumes 1-4)
DC Comics
ver wonder why the Marvel superhero films seem, for
the most part, to be soulless CGI spectacles somehow
entirely divorced from the heart and soul of the classic
print stories? The reason for this is because the real-life heart and
soul of the characters, Lower East Side-born and bred Jacob
Kurtzberg (who got his start as a teen drawing cartoons for the
E
Superman’s Pal is also the work of a
man approaching middle age and a man
struggling to deal with the extensive social
changes that were taking place in the world
in the late sixties and early seventies; Kirby’s
reaction was surprising and fascinating.
Boys Brotherhood Republic’s mimeograph newspaper, just a
block away from where the Nuyorican Poets Cafe now stands),
better known to all as Jack “The King” Kirby, departed for
worlds unknown in 1994. What remained was clever marketing,
showmanship, and pithy one-liners—the domain of Kirby’s former
assistant-turned-boss Stan Lee. For a glimpse into the story
Courtesy DC Comics
behind this Shakespearean role-reversal and some of the other
semi-tragic details of The King’s reign, check out the recently to take on. What initially transpired is a testament to the man that Kirby
published biography Kirby: King of Comics by Mark Evanier.
was: since he didn’t want to cost any of the existing DC guys a job,
What Evanier, also a former Kirby assistant, gives us is a wide- he took control of the only DC title without a consistent creative team,
eyed timeline with embellishments, never straying too far from the a laughable Superman spin-off called Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olson.
surface of things, and never straying too far from borderline hero- He could have taken anything, but, like many of his characters, Kirby
worship. That’s an understandable flaw given that Kirby was a himself had an almost messianic commitment to doing the right thing.
heroic man and artist relentlessly exploited by a young and quickly
In his inaugural issue of Superman’s Pal, Kirby laid the foundation
growing industry with all of the attendant snakes that slither toward for what would be a multi-issue epic, and, arguably, his masterpiece.
the smell of easy money. Of this,
With complete creative
Evanier provides an adequate
the saga he produced
The highlight is Kirby’s self-proclaimed control,
account; it is clear he is bent
was 100% Kirby: full of his
favorite piece, ‘Street Code,’ in its uninked unique vision and his unique
on setting the record straight.
Kirby: King of Comics is
entirety, with a full-page centerfold of idiosyncrasies. It is also the
essentially a coffee-table book.
work of a man approaching
urban blight that stops the heart.
It is the right size and contains
middle age, a man struggling
the requisite amount of eyeto deal with the extensive social
candy. That none other than the King of Comics provides this eye- changes that were taking place in the world in the late sixties and
candy is the text’s greatest strength, which, like most other aspects early seventies. Kirby’s reaction to these changes was surprising and
of Kirby’s legacy, comes straight from the man himself. Evanier has fascinating. Like everything ahead of its time, however, Kirby’s epic
assembled a formidable array of classic artwork, strips, covers, did not sell and reached a premature end, never to be completed in
and little-known Kirby stories (the highlight is Kirby’s self-proclaimed Kirby’s lifetime, just another tragic turn in Kirby’s roller-coaster life.
favorite piece, “Street Code,” in its uninked entirety, with a full-page
Some of the saga’s lack of success could be that Kirby was
centerfold of urban blight that stops the heart) that are well worth telling an older man’s tale in a format that was geared toward
the price of admission. With this kind of material as his backdrop, adolescent boys. The gravitas and subtlety of the story went far
Evanier
barely beyond the bounds of what was common in the medium at that
needed to write a time. Also in Superman’s Pal, Kirby made significant changes to the
thing.
Man of Steel in connection to his overall story, portraying him as a
Fans
looking sort of ultimate square, the straight man to his new cosmic hippies
for a glimpse into and ethnically diverse “kid gang” (Kirby was the progenitor of
Kirby’s private mind some of the first African-American characters in comics history).
and the intricacies Superman is lonely and isolated, at times unable to adapt to the
and peculiarities of changing world around him. He visits “Supertown,” a city in New
his character will be Genesis, Kirby’s Valhalla for the tale, and attacks a misshapen
better served turning giant he believes to be an adversary, but is, in reality, a simple
to the work itself, automaton helping a sculptor move his artwork around. The aged
such as DC Comics’ sculptor chastises him that “Just because protonoids aren’t things
recently released of beauty is poor reason to persecute them.”
Mark Evanier and Jack Kirby.
four-volume omnibus
Superman could be seen as Kirby facing the agonistic nature
of Jack Kirby’s Fourth of the comics medium, and the limitations of its usual morality.
World saga. Always ahead of his time, Kirby said this project would Many of the protagonists of the tale can be seen as a facet
be best suited by being bound like a book and sold in a “regular of Kirby himself: Orion, the grizzled veteran of the cosmic war
bookstore,” decades before the graphic novel format took hold.
between Apokolips and New Genesis, the son of the epic’s
In 1970 Marvel had finally pushed Kirby too far, and, in primary villain, and a hideous monster beneath his helmet due
response to a lousy contract with no raise in salary, benefits, to the savagery of his heart could be seen as Kirby now at
or job security, he left for the competition, DC, who offered peace with the war; Mr. Miracle, escaped from a sinister
him complete creative control of whatever titles he desired
Courtesy DC Comics
Orphanage on Apokolips and master escape artist, could
be seen as Kirby in the present, having escaped the fetters of
Marvel for a better deal (the tale’s most poignant moments
happen between Mr. Miracle and his companion, reputedly
based on Kirby’s wife, Big Barda, a ham-fisted female warrior
who subverted the mold of female comics protagonists of
the day, and who is constantly bailing Mr. M out of trouble.)
Much of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World may seem dated to the
contemporary reader (Kirby was by no means a racist, but his jivetalking depiction of black characters is archaic. He meant well, but
suffered from the biases of his generation), and Kirby’s innocence
and enthusiasm could be misinterpreted in a post-Alan Moore’s
Watchmen world as dumb in the head, but Kirby was a man of
ideals and an eternal optimist. These two qualities offer the modern
reader a glimpse into the fascinating psyche of an exceptional artist
and writer during a time in which it was thought that writers and
artists could realistically change the world for the better.
Jeff Downey
Amherst, Mass.
from Pasture
Will repair to parts
Unknown this time tomorrow
Read the mountebank’s note
If you dun
Converge upon me
Armed and allege
The heat kept in
An oven is asbestos, hollowed ash
For soap I made do with running
Fingers through
The hair of citizens
Before agency entered them
Bills in a bad way
Realized that future
Security meant lackaday
An elixir at least to moonlight
POETRY
Paige Taggart
Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
ligaments inside the
light room arched up
Kate Broad
Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Girlfish
Salvador, Brazil
In the motel mirror on the ceiling
starfish arms radiate yellowed and dead.
Sad mutant fish! Everyone touches you.
Your tubes wriggle obligingly
in mirrors and museums.
clouds underneath your
umbrella hood shook
the whole stillness into
merriment and rocked
the hinge open into
a belly mostly
it’s a towel and a lithograph
the two swung empty onto
the day bed
he rides memory
back home puts
his back against
a long wall and
spreads his portrait
into making alone
When you go down on me,
I think about Marx—short bearded man
telling me what to do!
Starfish project their stomachs
to capture larger prey, but I
don’t have enough. Sliding change
under bulletproof glass, think
what can be done to me.
I can only see light and dark, I protect
only small, unlikely things:
home is inside
the girl who
wants to be there
another hand, a missing leg,
a sea of epithets unraveling
in my hair. Maybe all bodies
are really other bodies, the poem
a poem of debris. Of motorcyclists
Elisa Gabbert
and coffee carts, homeless and chameleons
and sweepers in the park
who don’t care about curtains
or how many limbs however many
people make together, over
Boston
Poem With a Mind Game
My heart doesn’t hurt, it just feels
like it hurts. You say I seem “unphased”—
that’s exactly how I feel. Try this
trick to see shapes in higher-
and over, paired
and re-pairing,
put down among the rocks,
picked up by a thousand grubby hands
clinking their change on the glass.
dimensional space. Was it a lucid
dream, or was believing that
part of the dream? The plot of
Groundhog Day as cultural currency?
This room has no focal point,
no TV. I feel like I love you.
About the Poets
Kate Broad has work out or forthcoming in EOAGH: A Journal of the
Arts, Freshwater, Karamu, and The Wellesley Review, and is available
online at www.katebroad.blogspot.com. Jeff Downey, an editor for the
newly formed Microfilme Magazine, is from the panhandle of Nebraska.
Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent. Her chapbook Thanks
for Sending the Engine is available from Kitchen Press. Paige Taggart
has an e-chapbook, Won’t Be a Girl, out from Scantilly Clad Press. Her
handmade jewelry can be found online at www.mactaggart.etsy.com.
Or I love you, verbatim.
My heart hurts exactly.
TAMARA HEY
“Miserably Happy”
“All the humor,
intelligence, sarcasm
and soul searching
that goes with being
a New Yorker.”
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T-Shirts & CDs available on
www.miserablyhappy.com
I-Tunes, CDBaby and Amazon
2 BOOG CITY
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FOLK
Hey! Listen to This
Miserably Happy
Tamara Hey
By Jonathan Berger
amara Hey deserves better after spending well
over a decade toiling in the East Village music
scene. She’s unassuming and polite, and you
can’t tell that she’s one of the best songwriters in
town. Her work is excellent; with memorable
melodies and literate lyrics that stay with the
listener long after an album’s faded. Her
recordings (there are two prior albums)
have always been good, with wonderful
arrangements influenced by husband
Henry Hey. (Between the happy
loving couple and her producer
Art Hays they should create a
project called The Hey Hey
Hays.) In an alternate universe,
these three are a hit-making
machine. There songs like
Miserably Happy’s opener
“You Wear Me Out” (a
testimonial to numerous
reasons a couple can
thrive, many having
nothing to do with
love) top the charts
>>>
T
Frank Ishman photo
Deborah T.
Sunday, Feb. 22
8:30 p.m.
Sidewalk Café
94 Avenue A
Winter Antifolk Fest
Be there!
Picture Poems by
Damian Weber
www.housepress.org/Shaggy.pdf
WWW . WELCOMETOBOOGCITY . COM
BOOG CITY 3
URBAN
and get people humming while discussing the
witty images and thoughtful situations. We may
well have a window into that alternate reality;
it’s called country.
The last few years have seen Hey make
pilgrimages to Nashville, where she’s practiced
collaborative songwriting with country professionals. Always able to collect inspiration from
others, Hey has produced in Miserably Happy
a series of songs that add a serious country
songwriting lilt. While her sound has always
been a spirited amalgamation of influences,
she remains her own animal. An impressive
and thoughtful creator, Hey’s a songwriter’s
songwriter, composing insightful stories with
characters far distant from her own personality,
but who nonetheless ring quite true.
“Somebody’s Girl,” for example, is a tale of
an optimistic woman looking for a love as if it
were a lifelong, spiritual quest. The long-married
Hey may be able to reach deep into memory
for inspiration; the song does not read as a
recent diary entry.
The perceptive “Round Peg” seems to more
clearly delve into history as source material. The
title character, a high school friend of the singer,
lives truer than the narrator whom Hey portrays.
The song features a variety of hooks, from an
intro that’s reminiscent of the Stones’ “The Last
Time” to a chorus sounding vaguely like “The
Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and a bridge that could
possibly be from The Cars’ canon. “Round Peg,
I cut you out with everything else good ounce
by ounce …” the narrator recalls in the bridge,
before stating, “I want to be you, laughing out
loud but I’m bitter at the center and no fun to
be a round.”
“Isabelle,” another ode to an old friend,
regularly repeats, “Isabelle, I thought I knew
you very well.” This song sits in judgment of the
woman in the title, who is so submerged in her
current relationship that she’s willing to close the
door on intelligence and friendship.
It may well be that same character Isabelle
who sings “David #3,” an ode to the wrong
guy. “I hate your stupid laugh, I hate your Red
Sox hat. Despite all of that …” She never clarifies
the title, which presumably refers to how the title
subject is not the first mistake the narrator has
made. “Every night I dreamed about Mister
Perfect,” Hey sings before adding in a Bangleslike chorus, “I looked everywhere around ‘til I
found … David number three.”
Hey’s story-telling chops have always been
strong (prior album cuts like “Oscar and Bud”
and “Up in the Air” clearly attest to that), but her
studying at the altar of country has clearly served
her well. Next up for the artist: she’s working
on children’s songs. Good as she is now, with
the successful steps taken on Miserably Happy,
who knows what tomorrow might bring?
For more information visit www.tamarahey.
com.
It’s the Songs, Not the Singer
You Are the Beneficiary of Us
Ben Sadock
By Jonathan Berger
ature multi-instrumentalist Ben Sadock
is not an excellent singer, but what
he sings can be excellent. His debut
release, You Are the Beneficiary of Us, opens
with an exciting one-two punch. The first song
tells us that “You and me, and Mister T pity the
fool,” thus introducing the clever wordplay and
logistical language that will follow. Soon after,
Sadock runs off with the following lines: “Turn
around and then you’ll find it’s cool to be cruel,
but it’s cruel to be kind, and I kind of like being
kind of cool …” The references! The rolling of
words and rhythms! The regular alteration of
repetition! This is a Master class in lyricism.
What follows is better still.
“Let Me Into Your Life” features a chorus
straight out of The Simpsons, and a closing
lyrical sequence so exquisite, it bears direct
quotation:
“Despite the sinful life you’ve led, remember
what the Good Book said: Thou shalt not steal,
thou shalt not kill, but if you go, you surely will
steal my heart and kill me too ’cause I can’t live
without you. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not
steal, and I can’t change the way I feel. So you
can do-do-doodily-do whatever you want to,
but if you break my heart I will die, and then I
M
will haunt you, ’cause I want you to let me into
your life before it’s over …”
Other notable cuts are mid-tempo numbers
“Wise Women” and “Glory Be,” each in
their own way odes to alcohol. “The Most
Important Thing” brings a curious jazz-funk to
the proceedings, adding to a fitting sense of
experimentation to the album, while “You Don’t
Know” recalls The Zombies.
Ben Sadock has proven an able partner,
working occasionally with John Kessel (in The
Cigarettes) and Herb Scher (of The Herb Scher
Talk Show fame). His musical and lyrical skills
make him a potential MVP as a collaborator.
Sadock knows what he’s doing with the writing,
and the playing. As bass player and keyboardist,
he keeps the 13 songs on the release moving
right along. His singing is nowhere near as
strong, much like a clear role model, Paul Simon.
His high voice occasionally warbles a bit too
much (“Alone” reaches heights best left, well,
alone), but his songwriting and musicality are so
strong, they make You Are the Beneficiary of Us
a pretty fine release, not unlike early solo Simon
records. If only he had his own Garfunkel.
For more information visit www.myspace.
com/bensadock.
Living the Life on a Noisy Floor
Brooklyn is Love
Creaky Boards
By Justin Remer
t this point, the opening track from
Creaky Boards’ new album Brooklyn
is Love is more famous for what it isn’t
than what it is. It isn’t the song “Viva La Vida”
by Coldplay. A few months before the album’s
release, Creaky Boards’ leader Andrew
Hoepfner posted a video on YouTube where he
suggested that Coldplay had plagiarized the
melody for “Viva La Vida” from the seemingly
aptly named Creaky Boards’ “The Songs I Didn’t
Write.” After a storm of YouTube hits, write-ups
in the blogosphere, and random TV mentions,
suddenly Creaky Boards was sort of famous.
Of course, the two songs don’t really sound
that much alike. (Joe Satriani, who later claimed
“Viva La Vida” was ripped off from him, has a
much stronger case than the Boards, I’m afraid.)
What most earnest bloggers seemed to miss
from the tongue-in-cheek Creaky Boards’ video
is that Andrew was just making a preemptive
strike against those who might think he ripped
off Coldplay when his album did come out.
What gets lost in all this hullabaloo about
plagiarism charges is Creaky Boards’ music.
I mean, after all, the Boards sound virtually
nothing like Coldplay. Andrew Hoepfner has
always been forthcoming in his love for Brian
Wilson and Phil Spector, and pretty much
everything he writes and records comes out
filtered through those sensibilities. “The Songs
I Didn’t Write” more closely resembles a track
recorded using Spector’s Wall of Sound than
like anything in any current Top-40 list. It’s also
the kind of song that gets pleasantly imbedded
in your brain and won’t come out, so the song is
worthy of the extra exposure it’s gotten, even if
the controversy’s kind of irrelevant.
And what about the rest of the album? Oh
right, that. Yeah, um, it’s good.
Front-loaded with potential hits like the
New York-centric “Now I’m in the City” and
“Brooklyn,” the album eventually meanders
somewhat disappointingly between excellentA-material and still-quite-decent B-material. You
see, for a while, Creaky Boards was my favorite
live act in New York (they’re still near the top),
rocking out shows that were all killer and no filler,
so maybe my hopes were a little too high (or just
too different) for this album to completely satisfy.
Instead of the album equivalent of a highenergy live show, Brooklyn is Love is a somewhat
sloppy personal statement and labor of love.
The liner notes show that, apart from certain
augmentations and overdubs, singer-songwriter
Hoepfner played most of the instruments on the
album, instead of the exciting live band. The
songwriting, too, seems extremely personal
and even diaristic, sketching a self-portrait of an
artist transplanted to New York from Michigan,
dealing with the joys and heartaches of a new
town, relationships, and (on the nearly sevenminute closing track “SOS”) Andrew’s struggle
with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
A
REVIEWS
FOLK
What is This?
It’s been some time since Urban Folk has seen print. Once the self-titled premier
NYC publication on acoustic music, Urban Folk ceased publication close to a
year ago, with a tearful farewell issue (available for download at www.scribd.
com). The corpse wasn’t yet cold when UF publisher Jonathan Berger convinced
Boog City to house the music mag. (BC ed. Not much convincing, it was mutual.)
It’s a good thing. In the many months since Urban Folk, founded in ‘04 by Dave
Cuomo, disappeared, much has happened in the City: People played, bands
were formed and broke up, Indie Sounds went exclusively digital, the economy
collapsed and the Democrats are back in power (which may be the same
thing). There is no better time than now for Urban Folk to rise again. The effect
on you? Boog City’s music section has expanded, its focus changed (slightly).
That’s it. So sit back, relax, and read about the future.
None of this is foreign to what the familiar
should expect from Creaky Boards. Their last
album, Where’s The Sunshine?, hit many of the
same themes and features personal stories
from Andrew’s life. But that album utilized
cleverness in the lyrics as a buffer that is missing
from such seemingly raw self-examinations as
Brooklyn’s “I’m Touching the Electric Fence.”
And while what I described might seem like
a shedding of affectation, the new album
actually soars on tracks like “Brooklyn,” which
uses cleverness to take Andrew’s own story of
moving to New York and spin it into an epic
impressionistic essay on art, gentrification, and
riding the subway. It’s the kind of bold move
that characterizes earlier songs, like Where’s
The Sunshine?’s excellent “I Came to This
Town to Get High,” which uses a somewhat
misbegotten trip to Savannah, Ga., as the
basis for a similar overblown musical epic.
Brooklyn is Love comes in three versions,
two of which I’ve heard. I have not heard the
version available on the download websites,
which includes two bonus tracks not on the CD
or vinyl; I’ve heard those songs live, though, so
they’re probably worth a download. The vinyl
version is slightly shorter than the CD—probably
due to the constraints of vinyl capacity—but do
not fear, the vinyl version comes with a coupon
for a free mp3 download that reproduces
the full CD. Frankly, I prefer the vinyl version,
because what gets removed is a selection of
between-song audio collages that add to the
scrapbook/diary feel of the album, but feel
a little out of place overall. Since I’ve already
admitted that I’m just there for the songs—and
since Creaky Boards may be influenced by the
sixties, but I would never rightly describe them
as psychedelic—the exclusion of those segues
from the vinyl makes for a leaner, more focused
record.
For more information visit www.myspace.
com/creakyboards.
It’s the Singer and the Songs
Club Mate Plays
The Songs of Thomas Patrick Maguire
Club Mate
By Justin Remer
eil Kelly of the noise-jam band
Huggabroomstik, using the name
Club Mate, has taken 19 songs from
the three albums by New York singer-songwriter
Thomas Patrick Maguire, plus an as-yet-released
song, and remade them in eclectic ways. Since
Maguire’s original recordings of these songs
are lo-fi and minimal—usually featuring just his
plaintive voice accompanied by some Nirvanaish strums on an acoustic guitar, sometimes
accompanied by a drum track—there seems to
be plenty of room to flesh out the arrangements.
Yet Kelly does more than that; he refashions
each song into a genre experiment.
Maguire’s songs are taken out of the realm
of nineties style alterna-folk and repurposed as
reggae (“Now That Things Are Not So Well”),
drugged-out space rock (“Hospital”), and
even self-consciously goofy New Kids on the
Block silliness (“Toin Coss”). Using someone
else’s material seemingly frees Kelly to follow
whatever musical whim he wants to, and the
results are surprisingly solid and consistently
entertaining over the course of the disc’s 70
minutes. The end result is still as homemade
and lo-fi as the recordings that inspired it—
N
—JB
Kelly is more interested in atmosphere than
perfection, so there’s plenty of less-than-precise
percussion and layers of stray fuzz and buzz all
over the place—but it’s a handmade valentine
from one local artist to another that highlights
in one, the inventiveness in arrangement and,
in the other, the quality of the songwriting.
For more information visit www.myspace.
com/clubmatemusic.
Best of ’08
(An Unbiased Opinion)
Frank is backed on most of the album by a
band full of singer-songwriters, all friends and
friends of friends. On lead guitar (doing those
searing solos) and bass are the co-billed Weber
Brothers, Sam and Ryan, a pair notable not only
for their own raucous work but for being the
current backup band for rock legend Ronnie
Hawkins, the guy who recruited the outfit that
would become The Band. For Lovers & Dollars,
the Webers recruited multi-instrumentalist Timothy
Bracken to play drums, while Frank brought in
Andrew Hoepfner of Creaky Boards to do piano
and organ. There are also a couple of guest
appearances by Feral Foster on harmonica and
Eli Smith on banjo.
The band is most in its element on songs like
“I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine,” an Elvis
cover that’s done as a full-on rockabilly workout
with a few Beatles-style bridges tossed in for
good measure. But these rockers certainly don’t
bungle the more tender numbers like “One
Hundred Miles From Any Road,” which lilts
gently and features lyrics that would qualify it as
baby-making music for white people.
Rounding out the disc are two numbers that
Frank performs solo: an intimate version of the
folk favorite “Moonshiner” and the toe-tapping
title track of slide blues.
“Lovers and dollars,” Frank sings, “they may
come and go.” With the album Lovers & Dollars,
it looks like Frank Hoier’s time has finally come,
and it doesn’t look like he’s going away any time
soon.
For more information visit www.frankhoier.
com.
Dirty Dirty Dirty
Taboo-Shattering
Lovers & Dollars
Frank Hoier & The Weber Brothers
By Justin Remer
rooklyn (via Southern California) singersongwriter Frank Hoier has just finished
a full-band rock album that sounds much
less like the dreary pop or emo of today and
more like something you’d find in a used record
shop, shelved appropriately between copies
of The Band’s Music From Big Pink and John
Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. I was present for
most of the recording of Frank’s album Lovers &
Dollars, and I have just finished a documentary
film about the recording process (so when you
read my next sentence, expect me to be lying or
biased): Lovers & Dollars could possibly be the
best album of 2008.
Hoier’s live performances are usually done
solo, with just him and an acoustic guitar. In
2006, he recorded nine songs like that, and
put it out as the album Love Is War. Frank has
since referred to the album as a “demo CD”
and refuses to reprint it after selling out all of
his copies, though the lean production and
straightforward performances resonate like the
work on Bob Dylan’s early albums, without
sounding too much like Dylan.
Hoier takes a handful of tunes from the
Love Is War disc and re-records them with
a full band for the new album, and the new
arrangements are hardly redundant. The album
opener “I’ve Made Up My Mind” has mutated
from a mournful complaint about a dishonest
lover to a foot-stomping rocker, complete with
a searing electric guitar solo and a freeform
fade-out jam that is nearly as long as the song
that precedes
it. Similarly, the
sepia-toned
fugitive story
“Heartless
Words” (here
slightly
retitled “A Fool’s
Heartless
Words”) gains
a
greater
immediacy
with its new
train-rhythm drums and a healthy slathering of
moody electric slide guitar.
Half the album, however, is new material,
such as the tender infatuation ballad “We
Both Live in Brooklyn, Babe,” where Frank
asks his prospective lover the worthwhile
question, “Do I have to know your faults if I’m
to say that I love you?” Later, Frank spins the
dark character study “Ninety-Nine Thoughts,”
whose tormented alcoholic hero ponders
suicide and a possible previous murder, which
may have been all in his head. The man’s
agony is accentuated by an organ part and
an e-bowed electric guitar part that feel like
something out of an old horror movie.
B
M. Lamar 7” EP
M. Lamar
By Justin Remer
Lamar is not for all tastes, which
is not necessarily a bad thing.
Recently, I was at an M. Lamar
show, and someone commented with annoyance
that Lamar’s music was like a “vicious buzzing”
in the poor listener’s ear. Singing in a register
better suited to a female soprano like Leontyne
Price, and taking inspiration from the theatrically
imaginative but polarizing Diamanda Galas, he
plays minimalist piano and spews provocative
lyrics about sex, race, life, and death. In other
words, do not file this under “easy listening.”
M.
On his new white vinyl, 7-inch (“Though 91/2 would be more appropriate,” Lamar quips
in his publicity), he presents three songs.
Side one plays at 33-1/3 rpm and features
two of Lamar’s more infamous provocations.
“Dirty Dirty Nigga” is a rebel’s strike against
the conformity of the past. Lamar talks about his
grandmother working as a cleaning lady and
his mother telling him to stay clean. He instead
decides to be a “dirty dirty dirty nigga,” an
intention he declares as he clanks down hard
on the piano, violent but also appealingly funky.
(As Lamar later sings, “I don’t even clean my
ass/’Cause I want the funk to last.”)
“ White
Pussy” sounds
like the comeon of the piano
player in a
brothel located
somewhere
b e t w e e n
1920s New
Orleans and
Hell:
“They
eat the pussy
… They drink
the pussy … White pussy for sale.” Both of the
side one tracks repeat the provocations of their
titles again and again as he wails and pounds
the piano.
The track on side two, which plays at 45
rpm (a fact which I missed at first, and led to a
moment of puzzlement as a much deeper voice
than expected came out of my stereo speakers),
offers—probably intentionally—a different side of
M. Lamar. “The Conquest” seems to conflate the
war-stricken state of the world with M. Lamar’s
philosophy in the bedroom. Far less cynical and inyour-face than side one, “The Conquest” maintains
the atmosphere of Lamar’s other tracks but isn’t
satisfied to repeat a mantra-like verse. Instead,
What gets lost in all this
hullabaloo about plagiarism
charges is Creaky Boards’ music.
The Boards sound virtually nothing
like Coldplay. And what about the
rest of the album? Oh right, that.
Yeah, um, it’s good.
Lamar goes in for the sensual seduction: “My
weapon’s yours to feel,” he generously offers. But
make no mistake: he is an aggressor. He declares
in the song’s first line, “Defeat is not an option.”
All in all, this 7-inch is a solid introduction
to the music and personality of M. Lamar. It
certainly will be a helpful tool to decide where
you stand on the love-him/hate-him divide. But
I’d even recommend those folks put off by the
upfront taboo shattering of side one to still give
the sultry cut on the flip side a chance.
For more information visit www.mlamar.com.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Benji Cossa’s Vault Volume II,
Jewels and Gems
Benji Cossa
By Jonathan Berger
enji Cossa is some kind of sick musical
savant. Each song on his 19-track
collection Jewels and Gems is in a
slightly different style, ranging from white boy
soul in “Good Times” to the ’60s garage rock
of “For a Good Thing.”
Cossa’s homemade recordings are
charming, but the home studio quality coupled
with reedy vocals make it hard to discern many
lyrics. Evidence abounds in this years-in-themaking disc of Cossa’s musical prowess, but his
lyrical skills remain opaque. “I Don’t Know You
Anymore,” where Cossa waxes balladic amid
a variety of skewed tropes, gives clues that he’s
good with words. It’s one of the many hooky
cuts on this album, some previously released
on earlier compilations. It’s only one of Cossa’s
recent releases. He produces multiple albums a
year, so I look forward to delving into the recent
Between the Blue and the Green.
For more information visit www.benjicossa.
com.
B
Costello’s Web
‘Balloon’ video
Schwervon
By Jonathan Berger
Dan Costello occasionally likes to write about
music he finds via new media. As an international
adventurer, he sometimes can’t get to the
computer, so your Urban Folk editor is filling in.
chwervon!, the center of the Olive Juice
music world, has just released Low
Blow, their fourth album in the U.S. The
U.K.? Don’t ask. While a new Schwervon!
release is cause for celebration under any
circumstances, the musical duo (O.J. head
honcho Matt Roth on guitar and life partner
Nan Turner on drums) have made it a larger
event by producing promotional videos. One
is Dr. Katz-style animation to supplement a
spoken-word piece from the album, and the
other is the full-on, live action ecstatic video
for “Balloon.”
The latter is a joyous convocation of the
entire Olive Juice Music community, including
cameos from virtually anyone who is anyone
in the O.J. world (name checks abound for
fellow artists like Cthulhu Sex’s Oliver Baer,
Joe Crow Ryan, Preston Spurlock, Thomas
Patrick Maguire, the entire Kelly clan, and
that vicious album cover cat, Gummo). The
video includes harmonic singing from the
two band members, with visuals of a house
party and a roof gone wild with innovative,
excited dancing.
The video captures the energy and unity of
their musical community, making it an incredible
document of an incredible scene. This video
is not the first Schwervon! has created, and it
won’t be the last for this album; but it is perfectly
representative and, in that regard, glorious.
To see the “Balloon” video visit www.
youtube.com/watch?v=PaAPk2CQH70.
S
WANT TO WRITE A REVIEW (OR BE REVIEWED) IN BOOG’S URBAN FOLK MUSIC SECTION? EMAIL UF EDITOR JONATHAN BERGER, [email protected].
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6 BOOG CITY
d.a. levy lives
each month celebrating a renegade press
Events are Tuesdays at 6:00 p.m.
Feb. 2 4, 6:00 p.m., fr ee
A t elos Publishing Pr oject
(Ber keley, Calif.)
•
www.at elos.or g
Readings from Ted Greenwald, Jennifer Scappettone, Lytle Shaw,
Edwin Torres, and Rodrigo Toscano, with music from Lisle Ellis and
Larry Ochs. Event will be hosted by Atelos Publishing Project directors and editors Lyn Hejinian and Travis Ortiz.
Plus cheese and crackers, and wine and other beverages.
O NE -N IGHT A TELOS S ALE : $10
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hosted by BOOG CITY editor David Kirschenbaum
For information call 212-842-BOOG (2664) • [email protected]
Melanie Nielson and Sara Wintz
Segue Reading Series @ Bowery Poetry Club
February 21, 4:00 p.m.
308 Bowery, just north of Houston
$6 admission goes to support the readers
WWW . WELCOMETOBOOGCITY . COM
ART
Photo Courtesy Ace Gallery
Lauren Bon
Photo Courtesy Ace Gallery
Photo Courtesy Ace Gallery
Los Angeles
About the Artist
Laura Bon grew up in New Haven, Conn. She has lived in Roswell, N.M.; Los Angeles; Tel Aviv; London; Belgrade; and elsewhere. She has performed Modern Dance with Bat D’Or; made
Italian theater masks (Comedia Dell’ Art) in Paris; and apprenticed for Martha Graham Co., Isamu Noguchi, and Magdalena Abakanowicz. Her sculptures and installations have been shown
widely. She is represented by Los Angeles’ Ace Gallery, where these images were photographed in 2007 for her exhibition Bees and Meat.
•
“Bees and meat are connected in a wide-ranging series of myths and stories dating from prehistory to the present. These concern aspects of the metabolic as symbolized by the honeybee emerging
from the rotting flesh of an animal. This concept can first be seen illustrated in cave paintings, such as the one painted in 15000 B.C.E. in Valencia, Spain. Later we know of the cult of the apis bull
in ancient Egypt through hieroglyphics. The story of Sampson slaying the lion and discovering honey in its torso is from the Old Testament. Of particular importance to this installation is the myth
of Aristeaus, classical mythology’s beekeeper who loses his queen bee for his role in Eurydice’s demise and later is reconnected with the bee in the suspended carcass of a sacrificed lamb. This
myth is best known from the Roman poet Virgil’s epic, Georgics.”
BOOG CITY
Issue 54 free
editor/publisher
David A. Kirschenbaum
[email protected]
urban folk editor
Jonathan Berger
[email protected]
copy editor
Joe Bates
art editor
Brenda Iijima
poetry editors
Julia Cohen, Mathias Svalina
[email protected]
printed matter editor
Paolo Javier, Mark Lamoureux
[email protected]
counsel
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First printing, February 2009, 2,250
copies. Send a $3 ppd. check or money
order payable to David A. Kirschenbaum
to the address below for additional copies.
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BOOG CITY 7
Sidewalk Café
94 Ave. A (at E. 6th St.)
East Village
Directions: F/V to 2nd Ave., L to 1st Ave.
www.sidewalkmusic.net
www.antifolk.net
No cover, all ages welcome.
Kindly observe the 2 drink minimum.
Tuesday, February 17
Ariel Bitran - 7:00
Stephanie Nilles - 7:30
Aaron Invisible - 8:00
Isto - 8:30
Dave End - 9:00
Wet Bandits/Sticky Bandits - 9:30
Brook Pridemore - 10:00
The Everybody Knows - 11:00
Clinical Trials (feat. Somer) - 12:00
Wednesday, February 18
Wilder Worldwide - 7:00
The Zombie Nationalists - 7:30
Isaac Gillespie - 8:00
Brian Speaker - 8:30
Yoko Kikuchi - 9:00
Rav Shmuel - 9:30
Joe Crow Ryan - 10:00
Toby Goodshank - 10:30
New York Howl - 11:30
Thursday, February 19
Chloe Philip - 7:00
Domino - 7:30
Touching You - 8:00
Peter Dizozza - 8:30
Rachel Trachtenburg - 9:00
Jason Trachtenburg - 9:30
Dan Fishback - 10:00
Creaky Boards - 11:00
Soft Black - 12:00
8 BOOG CITY OCTOBER 2003
Friday, February 20
Bernard King Presents - 7:00
Dan Costello - 8:00
Eric Wolfson - 8:30
Herb Scher - 9:00
Debe Dalton - 9:30
Diane Cluck - 10:00
Frank Hoier - 11:00
Don McCloskey - 12:00
Saturday, February 21
Wizard Rock Women! - 7:00
Preston Spurlock - 10:00
The Relatives - 10:30
Phoebe Kreutz - 11:30
Huggabroomstik - 12:30
Sunday, February 22
Julie Hill - 7:00
The Warbles - 7:30
Nate Awesome - 8:00
Deborah T. - 8:30
David Greenberg - 9:00
Jordan Levinson - 9:30
Adam Bricks - 10:00
Mike Baglivi & The Open End - 10:30
Josh Fox & the Royal Drag- 11:30
Monday, February 23
The Open Stage with Ben Krieger
sign-up at 7:30
Tuesday, February 24
Aaron Jones - 7:00
Duck - 7:30
Laura Brenneman - 8:00
Jon Berger - 8:30
Liv Carrow - 9:00
M. Lamar - 9:30
Brian McPherson - 10:00
Ish Marquez - 10:30
A Brief View Of The Hudson - 11:00
Amos - 11:30
Wednesday, February 25
Manson Famly Picnic - 7:00
Alex P - 7:30
Grey Revell - 8:30
The Telethons - 9:00
Outlines - 9:30
Elastic No-No Band - 10:30
Shilpa Ray - 11:30
Crabs on Banjo CD Release &
Farewell Show- 12:30
Thursday, February 26
Kenny Cambre - 7:00
Ben Sadock - 7:30
Dinosaur Feathers - 8:00
Susan Hwang - 8:30
The Venn Diagrams - 9:00
Ben Sheperd - 9:30
Mr.Patrick - 10:00
Schwervon! - 11:00
The Lisps - 12:00
Friday, February 27
The Fools - 7:00
The Young Dads - 7:30
The Best- 8:00
Charles Latham - 8:30
Steve Espinola - 9:00
Erin Regan - 9:30
Lach - 10:00
The Wowz - 11:00
Ching Chong Song - 12:00